With #ShareaCoke, Twitter Unleashes First Branded Custom Emoji

Twitter gives Coca-Cola the first crack at using the internet's playful shorthand for brand promotion on the network.

It was only a matter of time before brands joined the emoji fun on Twitter.

Twitter has been creating custom emojis (also called hashflags) to promote big events like the upcoming Star Wars relaunch, the MTV Video Music Awards and New York Fashion Week. Twitter has also set them up for major sporting events like the soccer and rugby World Cups and NCAA March Madness.

Now, for the first time, it has created a custom emoji for an advertising partner, Coca Cola. If you include #ShareaCoke in a tweet, you’ll spawn on image of two Coke bottles clinking. Coke hopes to set a record for the world’s largest cheers on Twitter:

Twitter isn’t releasing financial details about the arrangement with Coke, but Ross Hoffman, Twitter’s senior director of global brand strategy, told TechCrunch that Twitter’s advertising partnership with the brand includes access to “first to market offerings” like this.

So will custom emojis eventually become an ad product? It sounds likely. Here’s Hoffman’s answer to that question in TechCrunch:

“One of our core values at Twitter is #ShipIt. We want to test things and Coca-Cola was the right partner to test with here. We have established trust over the years and we are excited about the learnings we will get from this initiative. The data we get back will help determine the future on what we do with this as a product.”